


I'll Come When You Call

by lar_laughs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/pseuds/lar_laughs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria and Natasha have a good thing.  So good that Maria's willing to jump whenever Natasha calls, even when Natasha doesn't expect her to.</p>
<p>Written for the prompt: Natasha/Maria - my S.H.I.E.L.D. and my sword</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Come When You Call

When the phone beside her bed began to ring, Maria didn't bother with the lights. This was the phone that never rang. No one had the number. If a phone was going to ring, it was going to be the cell hanging from her utility belt. It wasn't going to be this garish Mickey Mouse phone that she'd bought on her senior trip to the theme park and had never been able to throw away.

Without bothering with the lights, she picked up the receiver. "Where are you?"

"Maria?"

The familiar husky voice told her the hunch was right even if it hadn't been a real hunch. Only one person had this number because she only trusted one person with this part of her life. "Natasha. Where are you?"

White noise was her only answer for long enough that she began to reach for the clothes she'd thrown off earlier in the evening. When she was almost ready to throw the phone against the wall so that both hands were free to pull up her trousers, Natasha made a sound. For a brief moment, she thought it might be laughter but then she realized it was a groan.

"Where are you?" she demanded, yelling into the phone loud enough that her throat hurt.

"East... fourth."

"I'll be right there." Maria didn't hang up so much as she threw the receiver at the round mouse body. When she opened the front door of the apartment, she was already mentally calculating which corner of East Fourth was the best place to find Natasha's broken body. This was the part of the job she hated but one in which she had the most experience. She wasn't heading out as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Since it was Natasha on the other end of a Mickey Mouse phone, she was leaving the apartment as Maria Hill, seriously freaked out girlfriend.

Twenty minutes later, she found what she's looking for. The problem was that at least ten metal spider monsters have also found Natasha. It would have been better to call out Agent Hill, mobilize the whole weight of S.H.E.I.L.D. for an attack on whatever it was that had her cornered. Instead, Maria was stuck looking around for a weapon because she only had her gun and only because she'd picked it up out of force of habit. At the most, she'd been expecting the remains of a bar room brawl (Singapore) or a street gang looking for an easy mark (Rio). Not robots in downtown Manhattan... again.

She fell easily into her role, dispatching half of the spider things with as many bullets. Knowing she didn't have a backup clip and she might need the remaining few bullets, Maria tucked the weapon into her waistband and went after the rest with her hands and feet. They're easy to take down. Too easy, if she were to stop and think about the situation a little more. Instead, she was fighting to get to Natasha because there's visible blood, the sight of which turned her stomach. When she reached down to touch one of the wounds, Natasha flinched, her eyes screwed up against the pain. It must have been bad because the woman known as the Black Widow had fought with broken bones and ruptured internal organs as if there were nothing wrong. There was more pain in her expression than Maria had ever seen before.

"You shouldn't have come."

"Had to. You called me." And then it struck her that Natasha would never have called that number. Even if Maria had been at home (a complete fluke of timing), Natasha could never be sure she would pick up. If she'd been thinking straight and not woken up from the first real sleep she'd had in three weeks, she might not have. The number Natasha dialed tonight always went to a message service that Maria checked frequently, several of her phone numbers all filtering into one location so that she doesn't have to remember a different password for every alias. Natasha wasn't calling expecting help. She was calling because-

"Oh, hell no." Maria turns around, her back to the crumpled girl as she looked for the bigger threat. "You're not leaving me that easily, Tasha. I will not hear your final goodbye on a phone message. Do you hear me? You are not clocking out just yet."

She didn't remember much else after that, only that she fought harder and more viscious than she'd ever been trained to by S.H.I.E.L.D. because this was Natasha she was fighting to save and not some faceless nation of people who would never understand what exactly had been done for them.

It was only days later, as she was walking through the door of yet another safe house that only had a few of her personal items spread around it, that the full impact of what she'd done hit her. Natasha sat the couch, bruises blooming into full color on the skin she was showing. The doctors all agreed that the poison in her system would have killed her in another hour or two. A painful death, to be sure. The phone call had been a final goodbye, an inevitable occurrence which Maria had come to terms with long time even if it did still burn like a bullet in her gut.

"You look good."

"I look like shit." She smiled and her face transformed into something even more breathtakingly beautiful for a second. "But thank you. You get a few more days off?"

"Days? Not days. Never days. I do have twelve more hours I can spare for you." She leaned in for a kiss that had her stomach swirling in all the best ways. "And only you."

Natasha gave her a look, the one that said she'd been thinking about more than just the paperwork beside her on the couch. "You want to talk about it?"

"No. And you shouldn't either. You never do."

"But I've never put you in danger like that before."

"First time for everything." Maria sank down beside her on the couch, flinging a hand over her eyes as she tried not to give in to the fear. The fight hadn't technically happened on the clock so she wasn't required to go see the shrink but she was almost sure that she should anyway, just to relieve some of the stress that was sure to produce some cracks now and then. When she found that she couldn't sit idly by, knowing that Natasha's stiff posture was from pain just as much as from irritation that she wouldn't talk, she bounced back up. "You want some soup?"

"Soup?"

"Soup. It's good to have when you're under the weather."

"Then I'll take some soup. And so will you."

"I'm fine."

And then she wasn't fine and she crumpled on the floor, leaning onto Natasha's lap as if she needed something to keep her from seeping through the floorboards. The sobs made her chest hurt because she was struggling to hold them in but Natasha was threading her hands through her hair, holding her in place, murmuring words of comfort and it was no longer okay that she kept trying to hold it all in. The cracks had formed crevices a mile deep into parts of her that she didn't even know existed. She found herself offering up her soul to this assassin who'd had her heart since day one. There was nothing in the training that dealt with this.

"You came for me," she heard Natasha murmur. "You came for me and you didn't have to and I didn't expect you to. You came, Maria. My own personal shield."

"Wish I'd been there sooner. I hate to see you hurt. I would have fought by your side."

"No. I'm the fighter. I'm the sword." The words were said with conviction but there was a sense that she was saying it out loud to remind herself how things worked. There were bits that Maria knew of Natasha's history because of things she'd read in her file but also a few things that Natasha had shared. They'd opened up with each other in ways they wouldn't dare talk to others, offering hints at what it was that made them each unique. After each battle, worn and bloodied and so very tired, Natasha built her walls back up and this conversation was right in the midst of the production of making the Black Widow strong again.

Even though she'd fought in the field, been the point person for more missions than she cared to remember, Maria could never do what Natasha does. She'd never been good at subterfuge. What she did, though, she did very well. When Maria gave a command, people sat up and paid attention because she was a good leader. She was a good shield. For the first time since meeting Natasha, Maria realized that she didn't mind being back at base or part of clean up. What she did was important. As the sobs subsided, she let herself bask in the glow of the realization that she was important to Natasha. She'd compared her to a shield, something that the Black Widow never hid behind... but Natasha might need to.


End file.
